8 Things They Don’t Teach in Superintendent and Principal School - Part 4
(Fourth of a 4-part series)
New superintendents are typically surprised and often challenged by how much of the job has very little to do with educating children or raising academic achievement, especially in districts with frequent turnover in top leadership positions. In some states, the average length of service for the superintendent position has lately and historically been fewer than two years, this in a profession that research suggests requires five or more years of consistent leadership in order to affect meaningful change.
This juxtaposition often results in time spent building trust and establishing a vision with constituencies that are understandably reluctant to invest in the process. Leadership is only as effective as the "followship" it inspires, a process that can easily be sidetracked or completely derailed by the tenuous hold a new superintendent may have on the position. This difficult, though not atypical, scenario has a direct connection to two aspects of the superintendency that few anticipate as they acclimate to the job.
7. Much of the Superintendency Often Has Little To Do Directly with Educational Issues In any district with a full array of extra and co-curricular activities including a robust interscholastic sports program, issues arising from those offerings frequently and eventually end up landing on the desk of the superintendent. Even when proper delegation of authority and responsibility includes interaction with principal or athletic director as proper initial steps in a parent or student concern, some are never satisfied with the outcome of events until and unless the superintendent weighs in.
Parents are often at their most unreasonable and least rational when it comes to the extracurricular or interscholastic athletic activities of their children. Most superintendents with any time on the job have fielded phone calls or emails that begin with the statement, "This is not about the playing time of my kid" before a parent launches into a tirade that clearly or eventually belies that qualifier. It is almost always about playing time when a parent has a problem with the coach of a sport or the advisor of an activity.
Another realm that vexes most superintendents is of oversight of the physical plant, an aspect of district leadership for which most district leaders are ill-prepared. Though others are nominally in charge of buildings and grounds issues, many board members and lay-people fully expect the superintendent to know as much as anyone else in the district about fenestration, EPDM versus built-up roofing, or levels of carbon monoxide adjacent to all boiler rooms in the district. Time spent on each of those issues is time lost to overseeing innovation or ensuring gains in academic achievement.
8. Not All Board Members Serve to Advance the Interests of Students In a perfect world, those who run for a seat on the board of education would have no political aspirations and only want what's best for the students of the district. If true, then Mark Twain was wrong in 1897 when late in his life he infamously wrote: "In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then he made school boards."
In a more practical and realistic assessment, school board members are no more or less likely than anyone else to exhibit entirely human characteristics like compassion, ineptitude, or hubris. Their role as policy creators and fiscal overseers is made infinitely more complicated when parents burden them with unrealistic expectations of instant improvement and magical solutions to everyday issues. In a well-intentioned effort to assist parents, many new school board members overstep their authority and promise more than they could or should deliver when a problem is shared, often in a social setting far from school time and place.
Into this all-too-typical milieu confidently strides the superintendent, who is instantly confronted with the need to simultaneously settle an issue while correcting a board member's misstep that may have exacerbated it. The seasoned superintendent immediately recognizes the value and wisdom of enlisting the aid of the board president in calming the waters and settling the problem, if only by teaching a rouge board member the blessings of restraint when confronted with an irate or irrational parent.
Principals and superintendents serve in positions of authority and leadership rivaled by few if any others in a school district. These roles require patience, wisdom, and the humility to accept the fact that their jobs are sometimes made more difficult by others not restrained by professional ethics or a moral compass. Graduate school is important in the preparation of school and district leaders, and practical experience that only comes with time spent in these positions is irreplaceable and invaluable. Principals and superintendents who learn early that locally derived data and its proper analysis by professionals trained for that task is the best bulwark against making decisions based on instinct or experience alone.
The things not taught explicitly in graduate school can nevertheless be gleaned by those who anticipate the many challenges of running a school or a district. By considering possibilities before they occur and by having a plan for clear-headed and compassionate leadership, educational leaders are most likely to succeed by evidencing a foundation of what is best for the social, emotional and academic success of the students as decisions are rendered and outcomes are delivered.














